12 Edible Bugs That Could Help You Survive

Backpacker ^ | 6/27/18 | Matt Louv

[Svartalfiar]

>> If two billion people can invite insects to the dinner table, it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for you to include edible bugs in your emergency-survival diet <<

If six billion people won’t touch bugs, even people from warmer climates where bugs are larger, even people from destitutely poor nations, why should you?

Um, because you're in an emergency-survival situation? Insects might be the only option or a good option to extend what few other resources you do have.

[dangus]

Read my preceding sentence. Unless you’re in a locust swarm, you’ll never gain enough calories from stinkbugs, aphids, dragonflies or grasshoppers or ants to make catching them or gathering them worth it. In North America or Europe, same goes for termites. Even a dragonfly — huge compared these other bugs — weighs 1 gram, tops. You want to try collecting 200 of them to make a small burger’s worth? A black ant? You need as many as 150,000. And then much of that is chitin, which is non-digestible.

The only larvae I’ve ever seen in enough quantities to eat were gypsy moth and tent caterpillars... and they’re not edible; I can’t speak about the tropics.

I’d have to say that if you’re starving and willing to eat bugs, they skip over the one bug plentiful enough and large enough in North America to be worth your bother: cicadas. They don’t just show up once every fourteen years... they’re always there, just usually they’re hidden underground.

[Svartalfiar]

Unless you’re in a locust swarm, you’ll never gain enough calories from stinkbugs, aphids, dragonflies or grasshoppers or ants to make catching them or gathering them worth it.

I'm not saying hunting bugs is going to be a viable nutrition strategy long-term, but if you're in a survival situation and you can't find anything else, Bugs just might be enough to let your group survive an extra week until better food sources are available. Insufficient nutrition is better than no nutrition!

[dangus]

>> I’m not saying hunting bugs is going to be a viable nutrition strategy long-term, but if you’re in a survival situation and you can’t find anything else, Bugs just might be enough to let your group survive an extra week until better food sources are available. <<

Nope. What I’m saying is you’ll lose more calories doing the exercise to gather them. Want a few crunchies on your ice cream or to boost the protein content, fine, eat some bugs. But if you’re actually trying to survive until help arrives, conserve your energy doing productive activities (finding water... making sure your overnight is survivable... simply resting to conserve energy) and leave the bug hunting to tiny birds, moles, etc.

You’ll notice that every insectivorous animal is very small (songbirds, moles, etc.) or very specialized towards a single type of animal (anteater, ardvaark, etc.)